Christopher Howse writes leaders and features and reviews for The Daily Telegraph, which he joined in 1996 as obituaries editor. His Saturday column, Sacred Mysteries, is on religion. He lives in Westminster.

Criminal sharia judgments

We knew that sharia courts were operating in Britain even before Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury gave the lecture in February which caused such a stir.

It was said that these courts arbitrated on marriages, as Jewish courts or Catholic marriage tribunals do. Everything was to be done with the consent of both parties.

Now we learn that sharia judges have awarded inheritance to male heirs in a proportion double to that of female heirs.

More surprisingly, it seems that sharia courts are giving judgment in criminal cases. In six cases of domestic violence, according to Sheikh Faiz-ul-Aqtab Siddiqi, of the Muslim Arbitration Tribunal, judges ordered the husbands to take anger management classes and mentoring from community elders. There was no further punishment.

Can you imagine what kind of consent wives involved in such cases have given to the sharia court's jurisdiction?

Often, Muslim women marry in an Islamic ceremony without the ratification of a marriage in English law. This gives them no rights under the law of the land in the case of divorce. Nor would they have any claim to inherit under English law.

So we see the growth of sharia as a parallel jurisdiction to the law of the land, imposed on a sector of society that cannot resist it.